Monday, January 6, 2014

So many targets on personal miles and a fixed target on brevet miles - that's how 2013 started.. Actually, I consider November through October to be a year, being in sync with the brevet calendar, so targets where pretty much fixed even before december 2012...

After a recce ride and a brevet ride in december 2012, I started the January with a ride to Mysore with Akhilesh in the first weekend. The next week end gave me one of the greatest rides in my life - Grand Southern Trunk 400. For a person who started the cycling in highly rolling terrain and got used to it, a ride in all plain road became a treat. With Ashokji, I did this ride and completed in awesome 19 hrs 40 mins - that is 20 min less than the actual time for a 300 km ride. This is the first one of the rides which boosted my confidence towards a 1000 km ride.

Wrapped January with above rides and in february, I rode all four weekends. First week, first ever Fleche in India (you can read that experience, here).. Second weekend, to Muthathi and back , third weekend, a 300+ km recce for Tristate 600 (logs - 1, 2) and next weekend, actual event, Tristate 600 BRM. The first ever time I logged a 1000+ km in a month and rode out all the weekends.

In the Tristate 600, thanks to my stupidity, I had a fall and so didn't ride after till March end except one small but interesting ride(click here).. The near to disaster experience of this ride forced me to change my back tyre to Schwalbe blackjack 26"x2.1" - I used it for 1500+ kms and now Kalpesh using it, without any problems till now..

April saw two good rides with Kalpesh in 4 days time - 11th, thursday, A ride to Devarayanadurga, 12th, friday, night start to Ooty (logs - 1, 2). Ooty ride - reached mysore easily by saturday morning 6AM , it took 5 more hours to reach Gundlupet and we found already our speed lesser than 10 kmph due to heat. Called it a day, we stayed there and continued next morning. Just before Gudalur, I had Puris for breakfast and it messed up the day's ride - due to digestion problem, I was always felling full and so couldn't eat anything, but energy level kept going down. A lots of breaks and somehow managed to reach the top.

I didn't ride much in may. June saw my peak performances - first weekend I managed to pull the toughest, rolling Anchetty 200 in 12 hrs 05 min there by becoming super Randonneur. Second weekend was again a ride to Anchetty. Third weekend was awesome rain blessed western ghats trip. These three rides knowingly or unknowingly became practice rides for the next weekend ride, the greatest of my life till now - A 1000 kms. And a big replacement which made this ride greatest - tyres. I changed from 26"x2.1" knobbies to schwalbe road cruiser 26"x1.75" semislicks, along with change of crank, casettes and chain after a nice 8000+ kms.

I rode 1000 km in master Brevet series, managed to pull it off in 59 hours and there came the reflection of madness within. What else can be better than a 1000 km ride - A 200 km ride immediately after completing the 1000. Yes, completing the 1000 in odd time of 3 AM in the morning somehow didn't give me full satisfaction and considering to ride a tough Yelagiri ride, (the 1200 ride was scheduled just 4 days after Yelagiri ride - no time to recover at all), I didn't know whether I would be ready to pull off that 1200. So, I wanted to see whether I could do a 1200 and so, converted this 1000 km ride to a 1200 ride, since the 200 was yet to start (5 AM) in the master brevet series. Felt great with the 1200 km ride.

July - I rode the Yelagiri 400 and managed to finish it off in 22+ hrs, another best timing of mine.. A week later a ride to Devarayanadurga and that was the last 150+ km ride I did which is of not a brevet or anything related to it in 2013.

I became extremely busy with work and restricted myself to attend only brevets then after, except a short ride accompanying Kapil to his Mysore ride (Anil Kadsur's ride).

3 brevets in August - Tristate 600 again, A GST 200 BRM in Chennai to accompany Kalpesh for his last of SR series (which made me doubt whether we were riding a brevet or racing), and a KGF 300 for my last of second SR series.

Missed taking part in KGF 300 due to work in december, I ended the year with a partial recce for modified 14 poets brevet.

Targets ?

So, back to the targets, it was very simple. 7000 kms and this should include all the Banglore Brevets(all totaled to 5200 kms), and cover up kms should also be 200+ in 15+ kmph (these personal miles had even difficult criteria but kept on changing). 2 Brevets I was short off, and cover up kms, I never crossed 1000. I did more normal rides till june but they failed in either distance or in speed criteria.

Meanwhile, I came to know about the dailymile challenges in april. Interesting thing is, if we take part in a challenge, the count of kms towards that challenge will start from the day of enrolling and not by day of year start or when challenge was created. By this time, I already crossed 2000+ kms for the year. I took part in 3 challenges - 4500 miles in 13 months ending in december, 10000 kms in 2013, and 400 miles in december.

Though the second one seemed nearly impossible, I took the remaining two, and miserably failed in them either. In 4500 miles challenge, I was short of 118 kms. I took 400 mile challenge after a proper planning and still I couldn't live upto. These made me feel like I was always short of that one last mile every ride..

Well, though the numbers are satisfactory and better than last year, I still want more kms and completion of challenges. I like numbers - statistics and that is one reason I like cricket more - lots and lots of numbers involved. I would like to have more numbers in my sport - Cycling also. So, hope to improve on it and get good number of challenges also completed in 2014.